


The Side of the Angels

by keelywolfe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Character Death, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:10:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keelywolfe/pseuds/keelywolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wish I could say I thought you understood, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Side of the Angels

* * *

I wish I could say I thought you understood, in the end. 

That seeing you like this, like Donovan had warned me you would become, was an abomination that could not be allowed. 

I wish I knew that you understood; your death isn't a gift to the world or a punishment for your sins. It simply is, an end that must be, and I'd rather it was by my hand than any other. The Yard taking you down, perhaps, or your own from a prison cell when the boredom is crawling inside your head like a thousand cockroaches, eating hungrily through your brain until you take the only option left to you. 

I wish I could say I thought it over for hours. Considered it from every angle, took those skills that you forced upon me and finally came up with the only possible conclusion. Instead, I sat with my gun in my hand, sat in my room and pressed the cool metal to my face, felt the almost greasy texture of it. Your blood wouldn't be the first it had spilled. It won't be the last.

But you would know that. 

And I smelled the warm thickness of gunsmoke when I pulled the trigger; I watched your blood spill, a bloom of red, a study of crimson falling over your hands as you clutched at the wound. Watched your blood spread across the floor and the smell of it was like nausea. Like grief. For what was and wasn't, what never would be, for the lives you'd already taken and the ones I'd spared with a single bullet. 

I sat with you afterward, rested one hand on your chest that's no longer moving. Still, you were so still, Sherlock, like you never are. Were. I felt your skin cooling, slicked my hand through the widening pool of your blood. I wish. I wish…

I knew I'd never see your eyes open again, never see the light in them gleam with answers. Never have to see the way they twisted into something else. Something broken. Something wrong. 

I had to kill you because I loved you. And I never needed anything, and never will again, as much as I needed you.

There's still one bullet left in the clip. I'm saving it for just a little longer, long enough to believe that it's done. Long enough to see the wound that I made is real and that it's truly over. Your lips are cool when I press my own against them, steal a kiss that I never had in life and all I taste is the salt of your blood. Or perhaps it's my own. 

You never blamed me. I saw it, in your eyes, before I closed them one final time. Even then with my gun pointed at you, you didn't blame me and I'll never, never know if you understood why. I only know that you let me pull the trigger. 

Such are the sacrifices made by good men.

You'll never know how much I wish I wasn't one of them.

-finis-

**Author's Note:**

> The challenge was, 500 words to kill Sherlock and make John be the one who did it. Here it is.


End file.
